Opposition leaders since 1985 ranked by two party
preferred voting intentions

Below is a ranking of all Newspoll two party preferred
voting intentions for the opposition from November 1985 to June 2003. Two party
preferred are calculated from Newspoll primary voting intentions. Read
more.

Leaders are colour-coded; John Howard Marks I ('80s) and
II ('90s) are differentiated in this respect.

The columns containing numbers are: two party preferred voting
intention for the opposition (government's is always 100% minus the
opposition's); net
approval rating (satisfaction minus dissatisfaction); satisfaction; and
dissatisfaction at that
same survey.

Surprise surprise

John Hewson, who lost his only election, dominates the top, in
surveys taken both before and after the 1993 election. Many Beazleys at the
bottom, but they're mainly in the Howard government's early months, with a few
taken between Tampa
(late August 2001) and election day November 10 2001.

John Howard the eighties version and Hewson are also
well-represented at the bottom.

Magnitudes

The 1996 Howard landslide was with a vote of 53.6
to 46.4, and the two elections since then were 49
to 51 and 51 to 49.
The biggest two party preferred gap at any election since WWII was
57 to 43 in 1966 (fought largely on the
Vietnam war). See graph.

But look at the big opinion poll gaps in the table. Those at the top and
bottom opinion have not come close to being realised, which reinforces the fact
that individual polls must be
taken with a grain of salt, and so extrapolations of individual polls is a risky
affair.

Opinion polls often exaggerate margins. Trends matter.

Simon Crean's voting intention record is
deeply ordinary - 51% is
the highest, and most are below 50 - but he hasn't hit the despairing depths of
a Hewson, Downer
or a Howard the first (80s version).

Interestingly, Peacock
also shows up better than Howard I, which might
indicate that one bit of accepted wisdom - that the Libs made a mistake putting Peacock in
for the '90 election - is wrong.

Notional two party preferred

Preference allocations were calculated using flows from the
respective previous election. For the current and previous term, these are
allocated according to each minor party: Democrats, Green, One Nation and
"Other". For prior ones, all non-major party votes are treated as one
lump. This is due to data available, but it is really only the current term,
with historically large Green votes, that minor party differentiation is
important.